extra force of the wind demanded more rudder — too much, too quickly. The Mil turned on its side like someone about to die, and as he righted the machine the thin, rippling darkness of the fir plantation was instantly closer. The Mil was shivering throughout its fuselage. The nose was swinging out of control, the helicopter was becoming a wild sycamore leaf at the mercy of the windy air — north, west, south, east… the helicopter began to turn like a dancer in some mad balletic spin, foster and fester… north, west, south, east, north, west… it would fell in * moment, undirected and on open ground near the firs. Terrified a* the thought of fire, he stopcocked the engines and then pushed the main electrics switch to Off. All he had left was rotor inertia between himself and the trees — he had to control the crash. He drove the Mil downward the last few feet, felt the undercarriage touch, then dig and skid and snap… saw the rotors eating at the trees like flailing saws, saw the tail as he looked over his shoulder lurch against young firs and gouge and snap them — then crack open. Rotors grinding with a sick and hideous noise, then one snapped, and the Mil lurched into a slide, a fall, a stillness.
Still.
He heard silence ascend through the scale and become as real as noise. It had taken only moments. He had thought nothing, imagined nothing, simply waited for the crash to be over. He had known it would not kill or injure him; it had just been the end of the MiL.
Then he breathed, raggedly and loud and often. And heard Priabin in his headset. Shaky-voiced, almost afraid to do anything but whisper.
'Gant? Gant — are you all right?'
Gant stared through the Plexiglas, through fir branches and smeared resin. A small gap of starlight and moon-sheened sky. No huge tear in the fabric of the plantation; good. The Mil was tilted, but there was no surviving tail to thrust out of the trees.
'OK,' he murmured absently before the minutes ahead invaded his thoughts. 'OK. You?'
'OK, I think.'
There was a quiet horror in his voice, from the other side of shock, on behalf of the dead woman. Now Priabin would blame him more than ever. Become dangerous. That was the future, and he dismissed it, sliding back the door of the cockpit. He heard a thin branch snap, felt the chill of the evening invest the cockpit. Released his straps, climbed awkwardly up and out, dropped to the ground. Branches cracked under his feet. He smelled seeping fuel on the cold air.
He looked up — cover? Almost. He had driven into the firs sideways on, at a downward angle. Some of the trees had bent and slipped back like dark curtains while others had snapped or leaned drunkenly. Night — all night, perhaps. Unless they came very close, they'd see little until daylight.
Hie main cabin was intact. The tail boom had snapped off behind the aerial lead-in, a third of the way along its length. It stood like a ruined statue less than thirty yards away, masked by trees.
The door of the cabin swung open. He turned quickly to face cabin, then took off his helmet and threw it aside. Immediately he listened to the night, his ears still ringing from the headset's confinement. First, the disturbed cries of birds, then the sighing of the wind in the firs. Nothing else. Baikonur's single gunship
Priabin's face was a white, pleading mask in the cabin door. Gant realized that Priabin's shock would delay him. He felt a resistance mounting within him, but he accepted Priabin's priorities for a few moments longer. He did not want to look at the woman, as if he had contributed to her—
He had, he admitted.
Clambering up and into the Mil-2's dark main cabin, he heard his own breathing, heard Priabin's, too. The woman became reduced in importance. He did not enjoy his renewed sense of his own priorities, but accepted the necessity of disregarding her death.
Priabin had covered her body. She was, Gant made himself believe, no more than a heap of coats on the cabin floor. He stood very still for some moments, staring at the fuselage. Guilt lessened, faded. A heap of coats.
Slowly he realized Priabin was murmuring her name, over and over. The sound contained grief, guilt, affection. He could not tell Priabin it was time they departed.
Maps, torch, the gun, flares, even the radio? At least, if he couldn't remove one of the sets, he had to listen. He had wasted time here, he thought ashamedly, yet he was convinced he was right. The woman was dead; he had to survive. He had to know where they were, what they were doing. He jumped down to the litter of fir needles and broken branches on the plantation floor. He listened again. They were still safe. He looked at his watch, holding its dial close to his face. Six-fifteen.
He clambered back into the cockpit. Snatched out the folded, heavily creased maps from the pocket beside his seat. Found the flashlight, snapped the rifle out of its clips behind his head, high up on the cockpit bulkhead. Cradled these things like precious possessions. He needed to use the radio. Reserve battery power only — if the aerials had not snapped off, if the set had not been damaged. He checked the code cards in the slot beside the set. The helicopters regular KGB pilot had scribbled the military channel frequencies below his own codes… Wednesday. He hesitated, then switched on. Voices leaped into the cockpit's silence.
Almost at once, he realized their error. Some unidentified aircraft? No, vehicle moving on the north-south road beyond Dzhusaly. As much as fourteen or fifteen miles away to the northeast. What was it?
Black marketers, drunken soldiers, thieves, it didn't matter which. Time had opened like a carelessly left window, and they could climb through it like burglars. They had to take advantage of it.
Gant continued to listen. Different crises signaled like lamps in a storm. The three remaining gunships of the Baikonur
As he climbed down from the cockpit, he carefully cradled the rifle, torch, maps, bars of chocolate. He paused for a moment, then climbed reluctandy into the MiL's main cabin.
Even the exercise of power in desperation was a source of satisfaction, Rodin realized. His voice raged with insistence, unreasonableness, even threat, his features were highly colored, but none of them dared sustain their objections in the face of his determination; his power.
'The launch will take place in nine and a half hours from now,' he repeated like the closing of a door on some argument in a distant room. 'Not tomorrow afternoon, gentlemen, but before dawn. The weapon will be placed in its orbit one hour later. It will be used as soon as possible thereafter. Do you understand me clearly? You all have your tasks.' He had not paused for an answer to his question out plunged on. 'Your responsibilities. See that you carry them out. ^ is now' — he glanced at his watch—'six-thirty. Launch time is set at four a.m. tomorrow. Very well. Dismissed, gentlemen, dismissed.'
They moved away from him, their boots echoing on the catwalk ^here he had gathered them. He did not concern himself with their *ac*s, the expressions they might now allow themselves. He had issued his orders. It was simply a matter of telescoping the launch schedule from twenty-four hours to nine and a half. The task could be accomplished—
— must be. The American was still loose, and his sense of Serov s ability to stop him had diminished. His sense of other and larger failures had increased. He felt the distance to Moscow as tangibly as the black thread of a telephone cable, and Stavka at the other end of the connection. He would have to tell them, but not yet. His goal was clear. He must achieve the object of
Their — their freedom maddened him like a goad. He was diminished by their being at large, hampered and confined by it. While they were at liberty, he had only the illusion of action the illusion of choice. They had evidence for the old men of the Politburo, including Nikitin the social reformer, the open hand of our society as
